Ready For Eggs

Our chickens are starting to get to the age where we will be keeping our eyes open for eggs. Though they will hit their 20 week mark in a few weeks, I figured I would go ahead and get their nesting boxes ready now (just in case). 

For awhile they were all trying to sleep in the nesting boxes (more specifically, they were all trying to sleep in one nesting box, together), so I put up a couple of boards up to block them out.

We are using the deep litter method for the bedding and I have yet to need to clean it out since they moved into it the first part of March. When I do I can simply pop out the two boards that go across the back and scoop everything out into our compost bin.

Here is the back of our chicken coop with the door open. You can see the nesting boxes on the left side wall. The top opens for easy access to gather eggs. A huge thank-you to my dear hubby and his dad for building this awesome chicken coop. We used the plans from here with a few alterations. They also have windows that I can put in for cold weather and take out for hot weather. And, as with all our "farm" buildings, I painted it to match our house. All in all, I really like this coop.

Here is a view of the nesting boxes. First I needed to caulk the edges of the bottoms of the boxes, then I took off the boards, put hay in and added a golf ball. I've heard that adding either a plastic egg or a golf ball will give the chickens the idea of what needs to happen there. We will see, I've noticed a marked lack of brains in our hens.

Hopefully real eggs will join the golf balls soon! At $6/doz. the local farm eggs are making me glad we got our own little flock this year.